To breakdown the Russian box office for Marvel, some notable titles.
Avengers Endgame made 46 million in Russia.
Shang Chi made 9 million.
The first Iron Man, 9 million.
Next up, the gap between PG13 releases and rated R releases.
PG13 movies average 79 million for a wide release.
Rated R movies average 42 million.
Rated R films make a lot less money and traditionally, rated R comic book movies do poorly. Films such as Joker, Deadpool and Logan show otherwise, but those are still in the minority.
Russia making Eternals rated R is overall a pretty bad thing for money.
So, why was it made rated R?
Eternals in the US, along with all of Europe is PG13, like every other Marvel film.
The difference?
Eternals has a gay hero.
Bryan Tyree Henry is playing a pretty unknown superhero named Phastos, who is married to a man, has a son with him and the couple is interracial.
Was actually shocked Marvel hasn’t had a gay hero so far, but looked at it and nothing open.
Valkyrie from the Thor movies is bi in the comics, but not in film.
Carrie Ann Moss played Jeri Hogarth, who was an open lesbian, but that was a Marvel show on Netflix and not officially canon.
Loki was also strongly hinted at being bi in the Loki show, but again a show and not a movie.
So far, Marvel has had 23 movies in the MCU, but this is the first one to get an R rating in any country.
I wasn’t a huge expert on Russia, but learned some pretty amazing things about how bad the homophobia issue is there.
Selena Gomez was denied entry into the country for a concert in 2013, because she did an interview hinting she was bi.
Disney did an animated short called “Out”, which was Russia wrote them a warning letter on.
The Disney film “Onward”, which is a cartoon that came out in 2020 had to be re-edited for the Russia to release to not mention one of the characters was a lesbian.
Russia with LGBT issues is for lack of a better word, absolutely terrible.
And they are far from the only country to be difficult for gay people.
The Middle East as a region is traditionally anti gay.
China is bad with letting in media showing gay couples.
Even certain parts of Europe & Latin America while not banning it, can put disclaimers in over it.
Russia individually isn’t a huge film market, but it’s one example of many.
Which, I can completely see Disney or any movie studio deciding to not make a character gay if they find out it’d cost them 3-10 million in Russia alone.
This is one example where it gets harder to trade with countries which don’t have the same freedom America has.